Here in Austin we have the luxury of proximity to the
University of Texas (UT). From this well of intellect
we continually draw for ideas and young energetic labor.
It is a well that never runs dry.

When I started Journyx, we were always broke. We hired
one young lady, Sarah, who was working on her masters in
marketing and she worked for us for years very cheaply
creating our website, testing our software, writing our
documentation. She was awesome.

We've certainly had our duds. But internships don't have
to last that long. You only ask them to stick around
longer if they're adding value.

Say it isn't so! While fiber optic wiring rolls out around the country one building at a time to businesses clamouring for what has been heralded as the fastest, cheapest, more reliable and most secure path to the Internet, it may be that fiber needs to backpeddle on at least one of those bragging rights. Security.

Previously, the presumption has been that fiber is safer from hackers than copper lines. But check out this write-up on PC World reviewing a demonstrated hack on a fiber optic cable that was successful from just bending or slightly crimping the wire, without even breaking the sheath. Even scarier, the coupler required to bend the cable can be bought on eBay for just a few hundred bucks.

Now of course, the demo was performed by a Swiss company that sells the security solution to prevent this sort of attack. However, although rare, there have been documented cases of hacking into fiber optic cables by bending - including one on the Verizon network in the United States. It's a number that is likely to go up as more buildings around the country get 'lit'.

AT&T Finally Offering Unlimited Messaging

This only affects 62 million cell phone users in the United States. AT&T for the first time is now offering a flat rate for unlimited messaging in any format: text, pictures and video. The price: $20 a month. It goes even cheaper if you're only messaging other AT&T customers. If your company is getting killed on those .25 cents a message dings, then spend one last quarter messaging your AT&T sales rep to sign up for the package deal.

Irony Alert

Just a little something that I ran across on the Microsoft Small Business site. Is it me?

Imagine a keyboard with a cool sound and feel that mystifies anyone
who comes in your office due to a complete lack of lettering on the keys.

Yavolt! Enter Das Keyboard.

I've got one. I love it. It freaks people out.

You know that feeling you got maybe from that first heavy Ipod
with a screen and 80gigs that you held, or maybe your first VCR
back 50 years ago. Technolust or something like that.

It's like that.

So many companies forget to do this once in awhile: check your rankings in the search engines. And not just with Google, of course! You should be testing your site in all the popular search engines. It's an easy thing to spot check. Just make a short list of keywords and phrases that you think clients would use to find you and run them in the search engines. Note where your company ranks and start tracking those rankings over time. Are you moving up the list or down?

This is the new millineum, so of course there's a software solution for everything. There are a number of good search engine optimization aps out there for tracking where you rank, along with tools to tweek your site to help float it towards the top of the heap and submit to search engines that you haven't even thought of. Titles start around $150 - too many to mention here. I honestly don't have any favorites. When picking software, always read professional reviews from multiple sources. Note, I said professional. The anonymous reviews submitted to sites are often written by the marketing team of the software manufacturer (oops... was that my outside voice again).

I will offer this: seomoz.org. It's an excellent source of mostly free information on search engine optimization. Seomoz was put together by 37 of the best and the brightest in search engine optimization. Make sure you check out their collective list of all the factors that have the biggest impact on site rankings. There's also a good primer on how to get started in search engine optimization for the rookie.

Are you spending the weekend preparing that PowerPoint for Monday?

I was recently reminded of this PowerPoint tip. It's an oldy, but a goody, and worthy of passing on one more time.

It's the 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint. When preparing a presentation: it's no more than 10 slides, covered in no more than 20 minutes and never use a font smaller than 30 points. Anything more will make their eyes glaze over. So as you prepare to sacrifice your entire weekend working on that presentation, remember less is more. Maybe this means you can still have a Sunday afternoon, now.

If you're running a software company, here's why you might want
to give your software away for free (for a version that is limited in
some way):

If you're one of those Blackberry users that gets twitchy everytime you take a meeting abroad and lose service, well good news for you. Your twitching days will soon be over.

Research in Motion unveiled today it's new Blackberry World Edition that promises to work in about 60 countries and on every continent, except Anartica (there's a penguin joke in here somewhere, but I'll resist the temptation).

The new one-worlder smartphone will be available for sale sometime next month. In the meantime, you'll have to settle for the picture. Here's a 360 degree view from the corporate site, complete with ambient music that sounds like the beginning of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. Perhaps the marketing department went a little nuts on that.

Small businesses are inundated with people trying to sell them one thing or another every day. One investment that nearly all businesses have to make as they add staff or offices is what type of phone system are they going to purchase. For most small business owners, the decision used to be limited to a few key points: how much am I willing to spend, what brand will I purchase, and do I need a maintenance contract for that? Since about 2000, however, more complex concerns have been introduced into the decision making process. With the advent of robust Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions, customers had to make decisions on whether to move to newer technology platforms or stay with the tried and true technology. In the past two years, a new wrinkle has been added. A new choice is emerging for the Small to Medium Business (SMB) segment; the hosted and fully managed solution, allowing business owners to have all the features of a phone system without many of the headaches of managing one, if the marketing pitch rings true. Answering the question of which direction is best for your business is very complicated, as I firmly believe that no two businesses are exactly alike, and therefore the needs of each business will vary wildly. This will be the first in a multi-part series that attempts to help business owners understand the various technologies available to them, and the implications that each may bring for a small to medium business.

It's never pretty and it's always expensive (but the launch parties are always great!).

I can't resist jumping in on this one. Computerworld has been nursing this topic for a few weeks now, first by compiling a list of the 25 biggest tech flops of all time. And this week they came out with the top five tech flops, as voted on by their readers.

Quite frankly, I had forgotten all about Microsoft Bob (topping the reader's poll) and the Apple Newton.

Here's my personal list:

1. The Lisa by Apple. My Mom had one. It came out my first year of college and cost about the same amount.

2. The Pennyfarthing bicycle. Obviously, before my time. Good thing. I would have killed myself on that thing. What were our gg grandparents thinking?

3. AOL TV In a previous career life, I actually worked on this project. Ouch!

4. Every attempt at speech recognition, so far. We all want it, so everyone keeps trying.

5. 8- track tape players. No one from my generation wants to hear a ka-chung in the middle of Stairway to Heaven.

Is there a lesson to be learned from all this for business owners? Absolutely! I firmly believe we can learn a lot more from a mistake than a success. When you look at some of the big busts of technology, sometimes it's the technology itself. But, not necessarily. We all know how forgiving early adopters can be. So, clearly it takes more than a bad product to really blow it. As I look at my list and Computerworld's, I see some common threads: bad timing, bad pricing and a bad eye for seeing what people really want, need and are willing to put up with while they wait for version 3.0. Just something to think about as you groan thinking about how much you spent buying that WebTV for your mother-in-law back in 1999. Did she even take it out of the box? Mine didn't.

Google can now accomodate you on that one. Following last week's announcement that it will now be offering a free collaborative web-ap for making presentations and slide shows (can you say PowerPoint knock-off? Uh oh, was that my outside voice?), Google has quickly tacked on chart inserts to its spreadsheet ap (i.e. It's Excel knock-off... uh oh, there goes that voice again).

For those of you struggling with Vista

One of the many complaints about Vista is that it eats up to much of the hard drive. One of the reasons why: Apparantly, system restore can take up to 15% of your hard drive. Windows XP featured a slider bar to control that problem. Vista did away with the slider bar. Here's a great little workaround I found on Lifehacker.

If you're running a small business then you're probably broke all the time, especially if it's growing.

The cash float problem during growth is a mathematical rational reality that is easy to understand but
punches you in the gut from time to time.

What I mean by this is that if you are in a position, as most of us are, where you must pay to create something before you sell it and then the customer pays you 45 days later or so, then you have a period of time of at least 45
days, probably alot more, where you have paid for things but you aren't getting paid. This is called 'float'. If your
business is in a steady state, that float will be equal to 2 or 3 months of income. So if your company makes
$240k/year then the float is probably $40k to $60k.

If you're a big fan of cool backgrounds for your desktop, take a look at these
babies. This guy's been collecting these for 13 years and only lets the best
bubble up to the top. Some of them are pretty awesome.

Curt runs a time management company but sometimes still wastes his time.

Yes, you read that correctly! Hewlett-Packard has introduced a new line of high-end inkjet printers for the business market called Edgeline, only there's a catch: you can't buy one. Apparantly these multi-function printers crank out black and white prints at 60 pages a minute and color at 50 pages a minute.

What makes it all possible is a print head that runs the actual width of the paper that applies a coat of bonding agent just before the ink is applied. This makes for instantaneous drying and dramatically cuts down the amount of ink used on each copy. If you want to read more about the bells and whistles, I suggest turning to the blog of Michael Turner, HP Marketing Director of the Edgeline division.

Knowing that HP, like all printer manufacturers, makes its real money in replacement ink and toner cartridges, you have to ask; is this the Peter Principle in action?

Nope! Two words: service contract. You can only rent the printers. Maintenence contracts start at four year committments. Even so, Hewlett-Packard swears your company will still save 30% in total operating costs compared to the costs of other printers.

With this handy site you can cause your cellphone to ring and escape a bad date or boring meeting. "Oh man, sorry guys, I have to take this..."

I would never do this of course.

It didn't work out so well on Windows Mobile 5 devices, but RIM and Microsoft are trying to make a go of it again. This time just might be the charm. Just announced, Windows Mobile 6 users will be able to simply download Blackberry as an application by the end of the year, which is why it'll probably fly this time. Last time was a little more glitchy pulling off integration at both the device and carrier level.

Why the address bar on your browser may become useful again...

Check this out! San Francisco-based startup, OpenDNS, has just launched a free service today that claims to make your web browsing faster and easier. OpenDNS allows you to customize your own shortcuts for addresses. So instead of typing in http://technology.inc.com/blog to get to this blog (and props to you for doing all that, by the way!), you could customize the web address to something like tech blog, instead. It also helps block phishing sites and does a better job of finding sites, even when you misspell the address. CNet has a nice write-up, if you want to read more.

How is this free, you ask? I always wonder about that too. Apparantly, OpenDNS makes its money on the extra ads that pop up on screens that would otherwise be error screens.

Remember that movie about how Jobs and Gates took over the world? You
can now watch it online!

Curt Finch is CEO of a time tracking software company in Austin, TX.

"You promised what?"

"Well it was a long shot honey. They've never ..."

"Have you lost your mind. Dress silly. Do anything. But don't screw up your hair!"

Then I got a series of lectures about hair chemistry and sure enough I learned alot.

But a bet is a bet.

Here's what I ended up looking like.

I'm just doing my personal best to have Austin live up to its motto.

Curt is the CEO of a time sheet software company in Austin Texas.

Here's some fun little tidbits to get you through the weekend. We'll get back to business on Monday.

Did Anyone see Lost this past week?

Those first iPhones aren't expected to go on sale before summer, but apparantly they already have them on that Island back in 2004. Maybe it's actually the future as some fans suspect. Here's a screen grab of the mystery phone cameo. See what you think!

And if you're a Titanic nerd like me...

The Titanic story has always fascinated me for so many reasons. It was such a terrible tragedy and it haunts the imagination the way so many people died that night in such a forsaken, desperate way. It's also a cautionary tale that continues to cast a shadow all the way to 2007, a reminder of what happens when the latest, greatest technology becomes a tool of arrogance - instead of just a tool.

For the first time ever, the actual handwritten passenger list from the Titanic is now available to the public - online no less. You can flip through it yourself at findmypast.com for free, although a login is requried.

If you need something more tangible to remember the Titanic by, for a mere starting price of $7800 you can buy a watch made from pieces of the actual ship - that's right salvaged pieces of the Titanic itself.

Extravagance, state-of-the-art, cutting edge... just remember, none of those things are synonyms for invulnerable. And therein lies the lesson of the Titanic.

A Map of The Internet

We all know Al Gore didn't invent it (some of us even realize Al Gore never actually said that). But does someone actually own the internet? Good question. Complicated answer. Enter Lumeta's Internet Mapping Project. Here's what they've come up with so far. This covers just the North American Internet. Pretty interesting stuff.

Have a great weekend!

Does anybody besides Bill Gates like Vista? Apparantly, enough Dell customers don't and the folks in Round Rock, Texas get it! The new Windows Vista OS went primetime back in January. Dell followed the hype and started pre-loading Vista almost exclusively on all of their PCs. Many unhappy campers later, Dell announced last night that they will bring back the Windows XP OS and give customers a choice between the two.

Thank you.

BlackI(out)berry! What happened this week?

Earlier this week, eight million Blackberry users (not eaters) were left untethered to their e-mail from Tuesday night until Wednesday morning. Even then, Wednesday was a long day of service interuptus for many subscribers as RIM (the company that provides e-mail service for Blackberry) caught up with the backlog that piled up during the outage.

So what happened? RIM says after review, it appears it was caused by a glitch in a data storage feature not properly tested. It was not a security breach or case of maxing out capacity, as many feared and speculated.

A lot of companies are sweating it out right now, since this is the year that smaller public companies are required to meet compliance. And compliance to the so-called SOX Act, passed by Congress back in 2002 in the wake of the Enron scandal and designed to protect investors by requriing greater transparency and internal controls in financial reporting, doesn't come cheap. Average costs for smaller companies is around $500,000. For the big guys costs run into the millions.

There is good news on this front for small companies who've gone public (or perhaps hoping to go public someday). The SEC is making noise it mighten relax those rules a bit. There's a good little write-up about it on the Wharton site. Additionally, there's a bipartisan bill called the Sarbanes-Oxley Small Busines Reform Package kicking around Congress right now that you may want to keep an eye on.

If Vista is making brand new laptops slow, and sales in the developing
world are not clearly blowing and going, (or are they)
does that mean you should hold off on getting a new box
until things look up?

Of course Vista may be your only choice anyway before you know it.

Time to think about Linux?

Curt runs a timesheet company.

Que Horrible! The unthinkable happened last night. Blackberry's e-mail service provided by RIM (Research in Motion) went down about 8pm EST Tuesday night, but was back up in time for the morning commute. That being said, it's been a long day of service operating in fits and starts while it catches up on the backlog that piled up overnight.

The outage affected North American customers only. I say only, as if eight million people make a mere cocktail party. Nope that's eight million people, eight million very twitchy customers who really, reeealllly need their e-mail - NOW!

Hang in there. The worst should be over by now.

Google Bytes

Rumors are flying around the blogosphere today that plans are afoot to launch the Google phone by the end of the year. The phone would be built on the Texas Instruments 3G Platform and feature, duh, gmail and Google maps. However, it's not expected to include GPS software (bad news for that guy in the Avis car rental commercial). This sounds like a set-up for a celebrity deathmatch with Apple's soon to be shipped iPhone. My money's on Apple for the first couple of rounds, after that I would never bet against Google.

Today's the last day at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. In other words, right about now, conference- goers have completely bailed out of the Moscone Center and are now fanned out to tourist attractions all over town. Sigh... I wish I was there. The Expo would have been nice. An Irish coffee at Tosca's would have been even nicer.

Regardless, lots of interesting announcements and launches this week out of Web 2.0, and like me, you can have your goodie bag without dealing with the airline food, too.

For starters...

if you sell any kind of products on your company web site, an online rating service can only help. JS-Kit announced it is now offering a free version of its JS-Ratings Service. It's as easy as copying two lines of html code into your web pages and you can get it here.

Attention eBay PowerSellers or PowerSeller Wannabes...

Check out the San Dimas desktop from eBay. Judging from the screenshots, for starters, San Dimas has a nice sleek look. Word is, it features a new search interface, easier access to your bidding history and most importantly a new bidding feature built on Adobe's Apollo platform promising more ease of use leafing through auction items without hitting the back button. Another bennie, it is constantly going to the web to update information regardless of what you're doing. You can download the beta version for free here.

Live long and prosper

Spock is here! Sort of. The announcement is here anyway. Spock is a new search engine with a twist. It's a people search engine. It's sort of like Google and Facebook had a baby. Spock allows users to run searches on specific people resulting in a snapshot profile of data, as well as searching by category of people. Imagine the marketing or sales department getting hold of that. Here's a nice little review of Spock on TechCrunch.

Spock will be available in beta soon, but it's by invitation only. You can request your invitation here.

Time is money and I'm sure you Mac folks would prefer not to waste it watching that little pinwheel spin round and round.... and round some more. While so many OS X users swear by the speed of the Safari browser, it can definitely be a moody thing prone to stalls and slowdowns.

Kudos to the MacFixit site, for putting out this little tutorial on how to remedy some of the most common causes of those slowdowns.

If you love a good rumor, here's one.

And it's a rumor only - that Apple plans to launch a new iPod by fall with WiFi capability. I heard about it through PC World, who's quoting DigiTimes - starter of said rumor - that apparantly bases this little tidbit on leaks coming from the Taiwanese company that is involved in actually manufacturing them. I confess that I didn't read the DigiTimes article myself. I wasn't willing to pay the required $370 one year subscription.

Between that and Apple's announcement last week marking the sale of its 100 millionth iPod, maybe it's time for your marketing department to get serious about that podcast idea.

Good Morning, Bejiing! Big news today (tomorrow there already) out of the Intel Developer Forum, where Intel decided to unveil it's so-called Penryn chips. It's a new line of processors touted to run 40% faster than what's currently on the market.

These chips are designed to be mules when it comes to big moosey loads of data processing - like video and graphics. If you speak geek, here's a link to Intel's press release explaining all the Penryn's new bells and whistles.

Intel says it will have the new chips on the market later this year. As tempting as it sounds, you may want to hold off on upgrading. The Penryn chips won't just be fast in speed; their shelf life is going to go by quick too. Intel is also promising to launch it's even faster line of Nehalem chips just around the corner in 2008. The Nehalem chips are expected to run at double speed compared to today's processors. Can you say Moore's Law?

If you're a professional photographer looking for the just the right printer
this review might help.

Based on my recent post here, Apple might be getting back in the printer
business.

It's tempting to wait for a printer until that new guy becomes available.

Curt Finch runs a time sheet company in Austin and graduated from Va Tech (flying up there tomorrow)

Think about that for a minute and just how that might look. Uh huh, thought so. Don’t feel bad. It’s a notion slowly dawning on many business owners right about now.

Actually, you don’t even have to use your imagination to picture just how bad it looks. If you don’t have a handheld with web access handy right now, here’s a quick and dirty way to test how your web site translates to the itty bitty screen. Check out the .mobi mobile emulator on the dotmobi web site.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I tested this web site in the emulator and, hmm, it didn’t look so good (unless you like looking at a blank white screen). Someone at INC, smarter than me, is going to have to deal with that.

In case you’re wondering what all this .mobi stuff is all about; that is the preferred domain extension for web sites designed specifically for the mobile crowd (and their teeny-tiny screens). If you haven’t bought up your web address with the .mobi extension, you can check availability and register it at most of the major hosting companies, like GoDaddy, for example.

Meantime, here’s a nice little article with tips on how to design an alternate version of your site.

Okay, I have to confess that this is a little heads up I got from PC Week. If you’re looking for a cheap, in fact, free way to share big moosey digital files, like graphics, video or music files, without gumming up e-mail; you might want to check out Tubes.com. Tubes offers a web-based application that allows you to share your digital files, or any other kind of file, with anyone on your personal network. It’s all drag and drop, no uploading and it synchronizes automatically every time you connect to the internet.

In looking at the Tubes web site, it appears they are going for more of the home user crowd. But, it makes me dizzy to think how handy this would be for businesses. Imagine being able to put all your colleagues or clients on a specific project account and collaborate in real-time from various locations.

There are plenty of collaboration software solutions out there that perform a similar, if not more sophisticated, function. But Tubes is free, simple and perhaps a good introduction to collaborating online before committing to one of those other solutions.

Everyone in telecom circles is watching Verizon and Vonage duke it out in Federal Court these days and waiting to understand the real ramifications. If you have not been following the saga, say because you have a life or something, it is a drama that will affect not only the approximately 2.2 million customer lines Vonage claims to be servicing, but will likely affect the overall outcome of the VoIP service game. Verizon has successfully sued Vonage for patent infringement, claiming that Vonage uses technology Verizon developed. Verizon was awarded $58 million and a percentage of all Vonage revenues going forward. Additionally, Vonage was ordered to stop signing up new customers, but told it could continue serving the existing customer base while the appeal works its way through the courts. The next hearing is scheduled for later this month. Vonage does not reveal how many customer lines are residential vs. business, but I would suspect a fair amount of small businesses have taken advantage of the lower cost and reasonably reliable service Vonage delivers utilizing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. In fact, we have several home office workers in my company who utilize the service. It is a much lower cost solution than buying hardware and dedicated circuits in some instances for small office or home office remote sites, and in our case, an inexpensive way to provide redundancy.

Everybody likes to pick on Microsoft. So do I. There are plenty of reasons to do so.

It's fun. It's easy. They shoot themselves in the foot frequently.

It's always easy to pick on the big guy, whether that big guy is Wal-Mart, America,
Microsoft or Catholicism.

But lets step back and take a look at the good that Microsoft has done for the world:

25% of people in this survey waste 30% of their time online at work.

Wilfing has become an epidemic, although I would argue that
happened a while ago.

"Wilf" stands for "What Was I Looking For"

The net, used properly, makes people vastly more productive in just about
everything they do. Most knowledge workers - who need to be treated
like volunteers (because they are) don't respond well to intrusions like
CyberSitter or NetNanny.

What's a CEO to do? I'm not sure there's a technology solution to this one
really. I think it comes down to giving people specific measurable
achievable relevant goals with a time limit and rewarding them for
success on those goals. You still need to understand the per-project
costs of course, but trying to eliminate reasonable amounts of
"water-cooler time" is probably counter productive.

But with the Internet going interstellar, spacing out at work could take on a whole new meaning...

Curt Finch is the CEO of a time tracking company in Austin.

It's been a busy week in Cupertino, CA at the Apple mothership. Here's a quick recap of the top headlines there.

For starters if you were planning on upgrading your Macs this summer, think again. You can shuffle that budget item off to the fourth quarter. The launch of OS X (aka Leopard) has been put on hold until October. Apparantly, some of the key members of the development team have been pulled off the project and moved over to the iPhone team, scrambling to meet it's first shipment dates in late June.

The iPod team, meanwhile, is busy popping champagne corks at their end of the building. This week marked the sale of the 100 millionth iPod, a milestone that took less than six years to achieve. You can't talk about iPods without talking about numbers. During that same five and a half years, iTunes has sold 2.5 billion songs (.99 cents a song, that's easy math even for me), 50 million television shows and over a million movie downloads. That'll keep Steve Jobs in black turtlenecks for awhile.

There's one other number floating around about iPods this week, however. One: as in the first known iPod virus. It's called Podloso. Say that three times fast and then go forth and enjoy your weekend.

Not sure I believe this video, but if it's true, you'll need to get out your wallet for those cartridge refills...

This is an unbelievably fast supposedly $200 printer.

Remember "Storm Worm" from January? Well, happy Friday the 13th! A new version is hitting in boxes everywhere. According to a number of online security watchdogs, it started with a vengence yesterday on the 12th. Postini, a company that specializes in email security, is reporting a spike in spam 60 times the usual amount in one day.

Here's a list of typical subject lines and file names of infected attachments from Internet Storm Center.

As usual, the two best pieces of advice to protect your company network: make sure your security software is updated and running on all desktops and remind your employees not to open any unsolicited attachments..

Hotmail Having Issues Today

Are you reading this blog because you can't get into your hotmail account right now? You aren't losing your mind. There is a problem with hotmail this afternoon. According to Microsoft it is only affecting a small percentage of users and no word yet on the exact problem. But, apparantly it started around noon EST today. Stay tuned...

Palm and Linux: A Match Made in Heaven?

The CEO of Palm let it slip at an NY analyst meeting yesterday that they're developing a new Linux-based operating system for Palm. This could be huge for Palm. Since Linux is open source, that means more room for new developments and innovation. There's an interesting write up about it on Mobile Tech Today. Check it out.

Why Vonnegut Matters

In case you haven't heard. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. died last night at the age of 84. This is typically not the place to pay homage to great literary figures, but Kurt's an exception. He was perhaps one of the most famous technophobes of the 20th century. Defined by his experience as a American POW stuck in Dresden during the allied bombing of World War II, Vonnegut was only able to see the modern world through a cloud of cynicism. But, he did it with humor and razor sharp clarity. Always questioning, his books made us think about the point behind technology, society, government, anything that might potentially diminish the individual in favor of the masses. You can't escape high school without reading Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five.

B Schools would do well to require him too.

And so it goes...

It's not that jerk in Denmark writing the latest malware that's got your IT deparment chugging Maalox by the gallon. Apparantly, it's your own staff.

According to a new survey of IT professionals put out by Computer Economics, misuse and unauthorized access by inside staff are the number one and two worries when it comes to security threats. Spam is number three.

I think it's even more interesting to look at what kinds of threats IT departments aren't worrying about. Low on the list of concerns: phishing, electronic vandalism and electronic extortion. All three make for sexy headlines, when it happens. But, there is clearly a feeling of "it won't happen to me" judging by the results.

Let's hope this isn't a case of denial that leads to a case of denial of service.

As soon as I finish writing up this post, I will be uploading it to this blog thanks to my cable modem (I work out of my home). I don't get cable television, however. We have satellite television and no, we don't use Vonage. We're old school and still use a phone company for our phone service. All of this drives my local cable company crazy.

I must get two doses of junk fliers from them every week begging me to bundle with them. They really want me to fire my satellite television and phone service providers and put all my communication eggs in one basket - theirs.

Apparantly, it's not just residential types they're now going after so aggressively. The new target is you - the small to midsize business owner.

According to a new study put out by Insight Research Corp., the 20 biggest cable television operators are starting to go after the business market with a vengence. And yes, they'd love to hook you up with cable in the breakroom. But, what they really want is to be your new phone company.

This leaves the telecos quaking in their boots, and for good reason.

Consider this, there are seven million small businesses in the United States. 6.5 million are within the market reach of one of those top 20 cable operators. According to Insight's new survey, 1.5 million existing phone lines will be wooed over to cable by the end of this year. 10 million lines (keep in mind, most businesses have multiple lines) are expected to follow suit over the next five years.

Back to those junk fliers I get every week. So far, I haven't bitten. But others have. In some markets, up to 20% of phone customers have swtiched to cable-based telephony. Apply those figures to the small to midsize business market and you see why the phone companies are getting nervous.

Haven’t heard the term? Let me fill you in. Microsoft puts out its latest security updates every second Tuesday of the month. This is only significant to 95% of all PC’s in the world – since that’s the percentage of computers using Windows and other Microsoft applications.

Malware outlaws, who have nothing better to do than exploit code, have discovered that Microsoft programs are perhaps at their most vulnerable for hacking either the day before or after that Tuesday patch update. Security watchers now refer to this at-risk period as “Zero Day” Wednesday, as in the day after.

If you look at the calendar then that would be today; making this also a good day to update you on the slew of Microsoft security updates and warnings that have cropped up over the past week.

In addition to an emergency patch that had to be issued last week, Microsoft put out five additional patches yesterday to cover a total of seven flaws in code, five within Windows.

But wait there’s more, eEye Research’s Zero Day Tracker is reporting another three possible vulnerabilities in Office. Patches aren’t available yet for those.

Feel like you need a scorecard to keep up? Last month was easy by comparison. There were no updates.

If nothing else, this posting is yet another gentle reminder of why it's important to install those patches and updates on all your software applications - frequently!

"Hey Scott, just called to say everythings working ok today and you're a great guy!"

The calls are typically more like this:

"Hey Scott, Have you ever noticed that your spam filter pretty much only filters out our sales leads? But luckily it does let all the Viagra ads through which is good because it gives us something to think about while we're not selling anything. Did they have classes in spam filtering at the college you supposedly went to?"

Hewlett Packard appears to be more concerned with staying in the black, rather than going green. There’s a great little story about it in The New York Times this week, but I’ll link it from C/Net’s syndicated version so you don’t have to subscribe to access it.

Apparently, the higher ups at HP are worried that web pages are so difficult to format for easy printing that surfers of the near future just won’t bother. It’s a short walk to imagine that would means less demand for printers – and more importantly less demand for all those ink cartridges (where HP really makes its money).

With that in mind, Hewlett- Packard recently acquired Tabblo, a start-up developer out of Cambridge, Mass. Tabblo is known for its web-based software that features user-friendly templates for rearranging web pages into a printer-friendly format.

So, while the rest of the world is trying to come up with new ways to go paperless for the sake of their bottom line - and the planet. Hewlett- Packard is trying to come up with ways not too. To quote its own press release, “HP will be firmly on the path of becoming the print engine of the web.”

Welcome to the launch of our new blog, Business Bytes, one of 120,000 others that will launch today across the web according to Technorati's latest quarterly report State of the Blogosphere. No pressure on us INC Technology writers, but that translates to a new blog being born every 1.2 seconds.

Stat rat that I am, I can’t resist pointing out an even more interesting nugget from that report. Can you guess the most popular language in the so-called blogosphere? Hint: it’s not English. In fact, it’s Japanese. 37% of all worldwide blog posts are in Japanese, with English trailing in the number two spot at 33%. Chinese comes in at 8% and another big surprise (at least for me), Italian has overtaken Spanish for the number four spot by a thin margin both claiming roughly a 3% sliver of the global blogging pie.

For blogging business owners trying to connect with global markets, you might want to consider a translation feature to your site. Here’s a great little tutorial on how to do it, including the actual html code from either Alta Vista’s Babelfish, Google Translate or World Lingo.